FACTORS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 167 



2. The use of more capital in connection with a given area 

 of land and a given quantity of labor, thus enabling the same 

 labor to prepare the soil more thoroughly and care for the crops 

 more efficiently. 



3. The application of more scientific methods to the improve- 

 ment and maintenance of the fertility of the soil. 



Doubtless the very best kind of intensive farming would in- 

 clude all three methods, but they are not always found in com- 

 bination where that which is called intensive farming is found. 

 In old and thickly populated countries, where land is dear and 

 labor cheap, the first of these is the characteristic method of 

 increasing the productivity of the land. Patient, painstaking, 

 never-ending toil, combined with the utmost frugality of con- 

 sumption and the most careful saving of every scrap of manure, 

 have enabled these countries to cultivate every square foot of fer- 

 tile land with the greatest care and to support their enormous 

 populations upon the products of their own soil. Machinery is 

 little used and would probably, in most of these cases, be uneco- 

 nomical, because machinery requires power, and power, espe- 

 cially animal power, would require a share of the products of the 

 land for its support. Unless the land could be made to produce 

 enough more to maintain the additional number of draft animals, 

 their maintenance would reduce the food supply available for the 

 support of the people. In those countries where labor is so abun- 

 dant and land so scarce, the great problem is not how to save labor 

 but how to save land. It is difficult to see how the use of ma- 

 chi nery would help the people of those countries to a solution of 

 their particular class of problems, because machinery as we know 

 it is primarily a means of saving labor rather than land. 



Harder work. This particular method of saving land that 

 is, that form of intensive cultivation which merely applies more 

 labor to the land has little in it to attract the rural economist 

 in the United States. It requires either that the farmers work 



